Posted inEqualityGeneralLifestyleMedia

Poetry and diversity

Usually, when the term, ‘diversity’ is mentioned anywhere in South Africa, it denotes racial and/or cultural diversity, and it carries strong overtones of obligatory political correctness. This is also true elsewhere, if ‘diversity’ is a reference to multiculturalism, one of the most powerful ideologies of the current era (as demonstrated and critiqued by Slavoj Žižek […]

Posted inGeneral

Taking Employment Equity Seriously: Why We Cannot Ignore the DVC of Teaching and Learning Case at UCT

The current University of Cape Town Employment Equity Plan projects that by 2020 the African professor category will increase from 2% to 7% while only 16% of professionally qualified middle management will be African.[i] White professors will constitute 58% and white associate professors will make up 47%. Middle management will be 30% white – a higher […]

Posted inBusinessEqualityGeneralNews/Politics

Does the ANC realise that their expropriation drive will make of South Africa an economic ‘basket case’?

By the day I am more and more astonished that the ANC — with a leader whom I used to regard as an intelligent man — is forging ahead with an expropriation policy that can have only one result: lowering the economic status of South Africa to rock bottom, where it can rub shoulders with […]

Posted inEnvironmentGeneral

God, Darwin and Spinoza

People often ask me if I believe in God, and my honest answer is always: ‘It depends what you understand by the word “God”’. This word probably means something different for every person who professes such a belief, which is why there is such a thing as ‘orthodoxy’ in a church (let alone ‘dogma’): it […]

Posted inEqualityGeneralNews/Politics

Probation

Recently Ahed Tamimi was released from prison, after eight months. Apparently Israeli soldiers are cry-babies. Shame, a little Palestinian girl slapped an Israeli soldier, and was imprisoned for doing so. That doesn’t say much about Israeli soldiers. Cowards! Unfortunately Ahed Tamimi was unable to participate in this interview …she is under probation right now so […]

Posted inEnvironmentGeneralMediaTech

‘Beyond Humanism’ in Wroclaw, Poland

We are in the beautiful and ancient city of Wroclaw, Poland (the former Breslau, in German), at the 10th International ‘Beyond Humanism’ conference, where theorists of post- and transhumanism come together (in a different country) every year. It is the third of these inter- and multidisciplinary conferences that we have attended, and as before, the […]

Posted inEqualityGeneralNews/Politics

Madiba’s tears

From promised land to pariah It was many years in the making In colony and forged capital And many lives for the taking Thirty years of progress Thirty years of peace Mountains and molehills And never-ending grief This one, not that one The quota game we play To balance the diversity To realign the pain […]